What does astrology tell us about sex and sexuality? Astrology is organized by house — the ‘department of life’ where events occur.
The colored houses in the wheel are the ones that address sexuality directly. That would be about half the houses. For those new to the astrological system, a house is a basic division of the chart. The houses started with the signs, then became a wheel imposed on top of the signs; so that the two wheels make a unique pattern in each chart, and most houses comprise of part of at least two signs.
That aside, the houses have a certain philosophy that accompanies them; how do we divide up the subject matter of life? How do we think of the meaning of each house?
Part of the answer involves how far back the astrologer’s understanding of the houses goes. There are traditions involved in assigning subject matter to houses. In this article, I am assembling everything that I’ve learned both from reading and from working with many, many clients on actual questions. Here is a prior summary of the houses, not designed to answer the question of which houses address sexual subject matter. That page needs an update; the page you’re reading may be it.
It would be easy to find meaningful sexual themes in all the other houses, not colored in. Let’s start with them: the “non-sexual houses.”
I have left out the 1st house. The 1st is a crucial house of sexuality because it’s about identity — we all identify with our sex, our gender and our sexual identity group. Remember Hannah, the Book of Blue model who said, “It’s not about sex, it’s about self“? Wisdom from the mouth of a babe.
Sex and self are closely related. When you say, ‘I am a lesbian’ or ‘I am monogamous’, that is core 1st house material: how you experience yourself, describe yourself and the face you put on. One could write a whole book chapter called ‘Sexual Identity and the 1st House of Astrology’, and people would even read it. The 1st represents the self that does the sexing; the identity that is attractive to others or not; the presence in the world that exists and is noticed or alternately feels invisible and ignored.
We could include the 3rd house because so much of sex and relating involves language and ideas, from talking dirty to love notes to pillow books. Here in the BlackBerry Age, the 3rd is all those communication devices that have become sex toys, from video cameras to the digital keyboard we send those hot, pervy notes with. The 3rd is also the neighbors we flirt with; the roommate (or sibling) we play with. We could include the 4th house because one’s whole sexual reality is balanced on one’s level of security and grounding. So the business of the 4th house is strongly influential in one’s relational and sexual reality.
The 9th house isn’t about sex but it’s about either: religion, which impresses its sexual values onto people like nobody’s business (and for many, co-opts the whole issue); or spirituality/higher self, which is about sex because we have the theme of full integration of the psyche and the honoring of sexuality as a sacred ritual. In the Thema Mundi (the ancient chart of the world — a key teaching example from Hermetic astrology), Pisces is in the 9th house. Pisces is the cosmic source, the most watery water sign, the sign that embraces all, contains every trace element, swallows all differentiation, and provides a great deal in the way of direct knowledge and nourishment: and much that seems like mist and taken for granted rainwater. Pisces to human consciousness represents the headwaters of creation; the mouth of the river of creation; the River of Night and the ocean on which creation floats, and into which it will someday dissolve. That sounds like it could include sex.
The 10th house is the power house, and we all know that the more power and visibility you have, the more people are interested in you. So the 10th is full of sexual dynamics and if an astrologer is doing the chart of a successful or planning-to-be-successful person well, a check-over of those dynamics is vital.
The 11th house is about social groups: who we meet and where we meet them. The 11th would cover themes such as polyamory, because it’s a group activity in many different ways (poly people tend to create group environments in which to get together, their relationships are group environments, and they have different norms within their social groups — an 11th house theme).
But let’s skip that kind of house where a sexuality is implied or exists by extension, and initially cover the houses that specifically address material of a sexual or erotic nature, starting with the 2nd house and going in order.